Private Library

The pseudo-comforter,
Stitched by machine to look
Like a handmade textile,

Looked just like a handmade
Textile, the small patches
Of rescued scraps resewn

In echoing patterns.
Thrift. Not manufacture,
Not meant for exhibit,

Only colorful scraps
From worn-out old clothing,
Earlier blankets, ghosts

Of functional textiles
Past, sewn to look pretty.
There was a shelved closet,

Oak, carefully mothballed,
Stacked with neatly folded
Comforters, the result

Of an odd existence
Fond of making blankets
From the cornered remains

Of the more practical
Outfits of former lives,
Closet of comforters.

How Stories Exist

The novelist, the narrativist, the game
Of constraining what can or can’t happen next,
Body alone, other bodies, machine prompts

Constructing another scenario full
Of more or less expected kinds of events,
More or less expected kind of characters,

In some sequence for someone else to unfold,
Many someone elses, over and over
Again, lives life with a long shot at respect.

But the real action isn’t in inventing
Or the experiencing of the template.
The real action is the internalizing,

Body by body, of handfuls of templates.
Everywhere, all the time, bodies are telling
Stories of themselves assembled from templates

Provided or forced by the narrativists,
Telling themselves overlapping epic bits.
This is the story of how stories exist.

This Isn’t You

The body wakes bit by bit,
So it seems to the body.
Be careful how you put this.

You only live one body,
And it is not your body.
You may take these words and lift

Them carefully out of one
Awareness’s existence
To plate them like a dessert

In another awareness—
First the unique fingertips,
Then the stiff ends of the limbs

Linked to the gooey torso.
Someone else is waking up
To the disjunction of this,

Remembering waking up,
A body that is not this
But shares its embodiedness.

That’s the essential weirdness.
Somewhere, you woke up to this
And are this who are not this.

Nothing Doing

People aren’t tidy enough
To bring the world to en end.
Maybe make it messier,

Leave a lot of good ruins
And toxic waste for traction,
Brownfields filled with ugly lives

Thriving on the hideous.
If there’s anything better,
It will be thanks to systems

Once intended for humans
That no longer need humans
However humans need them.

It will be a messy world.
Won’t be the end of nothing.

Ask While You Can

Like a monk waking
Intervals of dark
To pray on schedule

(Inventing shift work
And clocks for a world
Otherwise sleeping)

The hospital flesh
Stirs from dreams, requests
Another pain pill.

Push the call button.
Wait for the angel.
Know it’s miracle

To be well cared-for.
Tomorrow you could
Wake up in the road.

There’s Something in the Woods or Not

The children remain in the forest.
Only the forest itself has changed.
Dense woods aren’t such a good metaphor

For where our thoughts get lost, anymore.
People keep tinkering, placing kids
In war zones, big-city back alleys,

Cells of virtual reality
In bedrooms of suburban houses,
All sorts of shadowy atmospheres

In which you can imagine a child
Endangered, quickly, easily, lost.
The thought experiment hasn’t changed.

Is there something to be discovered
Before living lost is only loss?

Wondrous Birds Fowled in the Netting

That, having captured,
You have to release

Carefully, banding
Without harming them,

Quantifying all
The relevant facts—

How many this kind,
How many banded

Already—weigh those.
Record your records.

Let them go. Somewhere
In a morning mist

In remaining woods,
Sun steaming branches,

You, your team, do this.
This is a real thing.

Most anywhere else,
It’s not, it’s not thought

About, all the birds
This world’s created,

And what observing
And counting ideas

Caught in the fine nets
Could possibly do.

Counting by Moons

When you were young, this was one

In the sea of old cliches,

A phrase you’d hear adults say—

Many moons ago. You asked

Or were told, off-handedly,

That this was how Indians

Counted time—by moons, not years.

It was just an expression.

It meant a long time ago

But not really. Half silly,

Half spooky, like anything

Connected to Indians—

Arrowheads, burial mounds,

Old river, town, or lake names,

Like Pequannock, where you lived,

1960s New Jersey.

A child is a traveler,

Anxious, aware of being

New to things, figuring out

Local customs. You couldn’t

See the sense of counting moons.

Your thoughts didn’t make the link

From them to their units, months.

And they were never numbered.

People said, three weeks ago,

You’re almost seven years old,

In just a couple of days.

But if they said many moons

It was some kind of a joke

At the expense of people

Who were now collective ghosts,

The Indians who lived here

Like moonlight, haunting the ground.